'Snowmageddon' continues to wreak havoc up and down East Coast

Carolyn Kaster / APA Pennsylvania Department of Transportation snowplow train works to clear Interstate 81 in Harrisburg, Penn., during a blizzard Wednesday.
NEW YORK — The wild winds and swirling snow seemed like the perfect reason to stay home. But there were George and Natividad Sanchez, bundled up and braving the winter weather. They came out, despite blizzard warnings and forecasts of more than a foot of snow, to keep 2-year-old daughter Natali happy. Her day care program, like city schools and courts and even the zoo, had closed Wednesday over weather concerns. That meant no trip to see “Sesame Street Live: When Elmo Grows Up.”

With their workplaces also closed, the Manhattan parents scrambled to buy their own tickets to the show. “I didn’t want to disappoint her,” George Sanchez said, as the family arrived for the show in parkas and scarves.

Parents all over the region were dealing with an unusual bit of midweek family time, as harsh winter conditions disrupted normal schedules. New York City’s 1.1 million public school students were enjoying a rare snow day, after officials decided to cancel classes in anticipation of anywhere from 10 to 15 inches of snow coming down.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said school would be back in session Thursday, adding that the snowstorm had been “a bit of an on-again, off-again affair.” “After a brief lull, snowfall at mid-afternoon reached the intensity that made the decision to postpone school the right one,” he said, but emphasized that students need to get back to class. “Sorry about that for those who wanted another day off,” the mayor said at a news conference Wednesday.

Bloomberg said the city was working overtime to clear streets and major thoroughfares would be plowed by Thursday morning. The Department of Sanitation deployed about 1,600 plows, and 2,100 workers were on 12-hour shifts.

Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty asked New Yorkers to be patient for another day in dealing with piles of snow at street corners and bus stops. “For people that are walking, it’s going to be very sloppy,” Doherty said. “That’s going to take a little while.”

New Yorkers tried to make the most of the rupture in their routines Wednesday. Tina Eng Caban spent the day with her 4-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, trying to keep them occupied with movies and some time spent outside in the falling snow. “I’m ready to go back” to work, the Brooklyn mom joked.

At Central Park’s Pilgrim Hill near Fifth Avenue, sledders were lined up waiting their turn. Deborah Quinn went sledding with her two boys, aged 5 and 9, who go to two public schools in Manhattan. “We took out our 46-year-old Flexible Flyer, went to Kmart and got the last snow boots in size 1,” she said. “When I found out yesterday that they had canceled school, I thought, ’This is just silly.’ It seems a little bit overreacting. ... Most of the kids walk to school or take the subway. It’s not like we’re out in the suburbs where we’re snaking down the highway.”